All over but the Shoutin'

All over but the Shoutin'

<b>A <i>New York Times</i> Notable Book of the Year</b><br><br>This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for <i>The New York Times.</i> It is the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most.<br><br>But at the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg's mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people's cotton so that her children wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives--and the country that shaped and nourished them--with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable.